A product's success relies on stable quality, and manufacturing is the key to providing stable quality. In a previous article in A&S China Best Buys, we presented a general picture of how Sunell plans to refine its manufacturing procedure. In this issue, A&S China Best Buys unveils how far the company has come to achieve its goal. A product's success relies on stable quality, and manufacturing is the key to providing stable quality. In a previous article in A&S China Best Buys, we presented a general picture of how Sunell plans to refine its manufacturing procedure. In this issue, A&S China Best Buys unveils how far the company has come to achieve its goal.

A happy working environment is essential to a manufacturing base and to acknowledge its understanding of this belief, every employee at Sunell has a smiley faced pin on his or her uniform. Gary Du, Vice Director of Manufacturing Center at Sunell, organized this event. Through the event, Du emphasized how a happy working environment can increase staff's efficiency. “There are plenty of measures to increase people's efficiency,” said Du. “This is merely for the people's mentality. Right now, I am conducting many other reformations.”

Since the closure of 2007, Sunell adopted several approaches to reform its manufacturing management, such as 5S, production lines reform and 3T management. Taking 3T for example — Total Quality Management, Total Productive Maintenance and Toyota Production System — the company has well established the first phase and is now moving toward the second. Du pointed out that it still requires two years to fully complete the 3T management. “Afterwards, we have plans to relocate the company's resources for other purposes,” Du said.

However, change comes with resistance. Though the company has adopted these new management approaches, they were difficult to implement at the beginning, especially in manufacturing center. “The most crucial is talent and training makes people to be a talent. Training is perhaps the most important challenge to overcome,“ said Du. “In order to meet different markets' requirements, our staffs, hence, have to be capable of working independently. Therefore, we will establish skill improvement workshop (SIW) to keep our staffs staying ahead.“

"At the beginning, rather than lecturing them about the method's theories, I showed our employees how these new methods can help them become more efficient workers,” Du explained. “This is the only way to make them believe that you are helping.” At the manufacturing front, the company started to abandon the traditional production line in order to facilitate the production procedure. “The Cell- and Uline production have been customized for Sunell,” said Du. “The company offers a wide range of surveillance products. Therefore, we need to enhance our manufacturing capacity and efficiency.”

The new production line has proved its success, with higher efficiency and more product capacity. Du compared previous statistics with current ones, after production reformation was adopted. The results showed that overall efficiency increased from 45 percent to 80 percent.

Quality Assurance

Du plans to bring Sunell to another stage. Most video surveillance manufacturers in China still use physical testing via staff's eyesight in regards to image resolution, S/N ratio and distortion. With only a basic resolution chart and testers' experience however, a product's quality cannot be guaranteed one hundred percent. Du plans to introduce software based testing for products.

"I have purchased a capture card from an US-based company,” Du said. “After capturing the image, the software analyzes the image, turns i t into f igures and processes it with specific software to examine resolution, S/N ratio and so on more precisely. This solution has a long way to go but I would say that it yields much opportunity in China.”

Moreover, Sunell has a strict quality control procedure. There are several tests involved in the various stages of the production line. From the initial PCB boards, to the finished products, to packaging, Sunell conducts process quality control (IPQC), housing testing, aging testing, out quality control (OQC) and open box audit (OBA). With these quality control measures, Du is proud to say that Sunell's product performance can meet or even exceed customers' requirements.

In today's recession period, buyers are becoming ever more critical about quality. Sunell's new method of manufacturing and management has only one goal — to provide the market stable and quality products.